McNeese, LSU travel to New Orleans

Things have been pretty good for McNeese under first-year coach Justin Hill, but last week the Cowboys hit a bit of a funk
and lost three of four games including dropping the weekend series to Northwestern State.

The Cowboys (20-14) look to rebound at 6:30 p.m. tonight in New Orleans against a slumping Tulane (14-20), which has lost
its last five games and 10 of its last 12.

Tonight’s game will be the first time McNeese and Tulane have played each other in baseball since 2009.

McNeese’s bats struggled in the weekend
losses, being shut out in both despite good pitching from Friday
starter Kaleb Fontenot
and Sunday starter Bryce Kingsley, who put together his best
outing of the season in a 4-0 loss. The weekend series loss was
the Cowboys’ first of the season and dropped them into a three-way
tie for first in the Southland Conference with Northwestern
State and Nicholls.

“(It’s) probably (the first time) over a stretch,” Hill said. “I think we’ve had patches of adversity, being that in one game
or from one game to the next. Over a weekend when you lose your first series there’s some adversity there.

“Our kids have been through adversity before and I expect us to come out on the good end of it. ... Our kids come to play
every day. They do a good job. They’re workers, they’re a tough group and they don’t like to lose.”

McNeese will start senior right-hander
Michael Desebrais (0-1, 5.47) tomorrow, but Hill plans to use several
pitchers in anticipation
of an important conference series against Central Arkansas this
weekend.

“There’ll probably be quite a few guys throw,” Hill said. “This will be the third week where we’ve played, had a day off,
play and then have a weekend series.

“Most likely, you won’t see anyone after Michael extended over one or two innings. We’ve got to make sure all our arms are
ready for the weekend ...”

LSU, which rose to No. 12 in this week’s Baseball America rankings, travels to New Orleans tonight to play Southern Miss (21-16)
at 7 p.m. on Cox Sports in its annual Wally Pontiff Jr. Foundation Classic at Zephyr Field.

The Tigers (27-9-1) hope to bounce back from a 10-4 Sunday loss to Arkansas. The Tigers won the series but continued a trend
of struggling on Sundays. LSU has gone 1-3-1 on Sunday games in SEC play.

“It was a disappointing day for us,” LSU head coach Paul Mainieri said Sunday. “We had a chance to sweep the series, but we
didn’t get the job done ...”